41.3 The Increased Importance of Research
Until the 1980s roughly one-third of funding for all universities (a much smaller
number than is the case now) was given for doing research, irrespective of its nature
or quality. It was assumed that, in Newman’s words,‘a place of teaching universal
knowledge’required time and resources for scholarship and research generally
conceived. But there was not universal pressure to seek research funding or to
publish. That was radically changed upon the considerable expansion of universities
just referred to. That‘one third’was removed from the funding of universities and
would be returned proportionately to the assessment of the quality of the research
conducted. Thus was established what was referred to as the Research Assessment
Exercise (RAE)—the advent of‘quality measurement’. Quality was measured on a
scale 5 (of international excellence) down to 1. There would be winners.
Departments graded 5 and 4 would receive much more than the one-third removed.
There would be losers. Departments graded 2 and 1 would receive much less.
The RAE began in 1986 and has been conducted roughly every four years ever since.
The RAE became the Research Excellence Framework (REF) in 2010 with
much more importance attached to the measured quality of publications on a scale
1 – 4 and on the‘impact’(also measured) of the research conducted on economic
usefulness, government policy, social improvement, and so on. The quantum of
money for the top grades has become focused more and more on fewer‘research
universities’. Indeed, the distinction is made now between‘research universities’
and‘teaching universities’,reflecting profound differences in funding.
All this is most important in our understanding of the evolving nature of uni-
versity departments of education and indeed of their continuing survival.
41.4 Evolving Nature of Educational Studies
Within Universities
Educational studies had become, as explained above, a major‘discipline’within the
university sector, with all teachers trained within universities either as post-graduate
trainees or via the newly established professional degree, the B.Ed. Now being part
of the university system, educational studies needed to gain greater‘academic
respectability’. At a conference of the Association of Teachers in Colleges and
Departments of Education in Hull in 1964, studies for the professional development
of teachers were dismissed by Professor Richard Peters as‘so much undifferentiated
mush’. Henceforth began a purposeful attempt to inject into the professional
training and development of teachers an academic rigour that respectability in the
eyes of the universities demanded. There was an exponential growth of theory in
what were called the‘foundation disciplines’—the philosophy, sociology, psy-
chology and history of education, andfinally comparative and curriculum studies.
41 Research and the Undermining of Teacher Education 611